Reflection on American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 by William Manchester

               I wanted to read this book because I really enjoyed Manchester’s biography of Churchill. While American Caesar is not as well written, it shares some very interesting thematic similarities. Both books are about men of the West born at the end of the Victorian Age and dying in the Atomic Age. Both men were meant to fight the Manichean struggle of World War Two and both saw themselves as extremely important in the history of the world from a young age. They both became disillusioned with war in their elder years and both dreamed of ending it. They both hated Communism. Both men were patricians, raised to see themselves as above all others, a trait that would have important effects on their leadership abilities.

               One interesting facet of MacArthur’s reputation is that he was hated by his own troops but loved by American civilians and foreigners. His own soldiers called him “Dugout Doug,” but the author argues that MacArthur was anything but the type of general who liked to stay away from the fighting. While he kept himself comfortable behind the lines, MacArthur frequently sought out danger and exposed himself to enemy fire countless times—this book references at least a dozen. Only once though did MacArthur truly think he would die, and it was when the Japanese seized Bataan with him and his family close by on Corregidor Island. He was sure that they were all dead until FDR ordered him back to Australia.

               MacArthur was a great general due to his “leapfrogging” technique. Rather than hitting every Japanese bastion so as not to leave enemy fortresses in his rear. MacArthur skipped all that he could, frustrating well-trained Japanese troops who wanted to see combat and cutting off their supply lines. By doing this, he achieved the lowest rates of casualties of any general in the war. In the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur advanced nearly two thousand miles in two years and did eleven hundred of them in two months.

               Something interesting about MacArthur was that he was very liberal. Like Churchill, this did not come out of any identification with common people, but due to his patrician upbringing that commanded a sense of noblesse oblige. Entering Manila, MacArthur could have shut off the roads to civilian traffic to speed up military vehicles but chose not to, saying that, “Before I interfere with the civilian population, so hard hit by the horrors of war, things will have to be a lot worse for us.” MacArthur also expressed sympathy for the Hukbalahaps, who dispossessed landlords and created agrarian soviets in central Luzon. He said that, “I haven’t got the heart to dispossess them. If I worked in those sugar fields I’d probably be a Huk myself.” He opposed discrimination by whites against the local Filipinos and was remarkably anti-racist for a white man of his time. As the dictator of Japan after the war, MacArthur gave women the vote, legalized divorce, dismantled the war industry, held free elections, formed labor unions, and opened all schools without any restrictions on instruction except that they must eliminate military indoctrination and add civics classes. The General also banned American troops from eating Japanese food and canceled martial law. He exhibited tremendous generosity and clemency. The Filipinos and Japanese loved MacArthur immensely and probably even more than the American people.

               MacArthur was dismissed for being openly insubordinate to Truman in the Korean War, attempting to escalate the war when Truman wanted to deescalate to a stalemate. MacArthur’s firm belief was that wars are made to be won and that the USA should have launched an invasion of China. He was recalled but remembered by Americans as one of the greatest public figures of all time.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• MacArthur’s father, who had a Medal of Honor. Desired above all else to have died at the head of his regiment. He got his wish when he was giving a speech to them 50 years after the Civil War when he collapsed and died at their reunion.
• MacArthur was hazed hard at West Point. Southern cadets had him freeze still and recite his father’s Civil War record and then beat him so hard that he had a seizure. “During a lull in his spasms he asked his tentmate… to put a blanket under his feet” to keep his movements quiet and another in his mouth for his outcries.
• MacArthur was a model West Point cadet, finishing first in his class with the third highest points ever achieved at West Point.
• MacArthur did not have a lot of toxic masculinity in him—he let his son dress as a ballerina and a princess as a child.
• Manila was the second hardest hit allied city in the war after Warsaw. Manchester writes that, “seventy percent of the utilities, 75 percent of the factories, 80 percent of the southern residential district, and 100 percent of the business district were razed. Nearly 100,000 Filipinos were murdered by the Japanese.
• MacArthur’s land campaign in the Philippines was a work of genius, taking 17 American divisions against 23 Japanese and coming out losing only 820 men to Japan’s 21,000 losses.
• These are the author’s word’s, not MacArthur’s, but I like how he tries to describe MacArthur’s attitude: “…a gentleman did not look upon women as inferiors. To do so was, by definition, ungentlemanly. It was more; it was, he told those who disagreed with him, sacrilegious. Women, like men, had souls. Therefore they should be treated equally.”
• MacArthur also had a genius-level campaign in Korea, where he defeated 30-40,000 North Koreans in a daring surprise landing at Inchon at a cost of only 536 dead and 2,550 wounded to American forces.